


you have four new messages (press play?)

by exogenesis



Category: Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Flashbacks, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 12:43:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19723900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exogenesis/pseuds/exogenesis
Summary: A few weeks after destroying the super-collider, Miles pays Uncle Aaron’s apartment a visit. The answer machine is blinking.OR: You’ve gotta face these memories at some point, Miles Morales.





	you have four new messages (press play?)

**Author's Note:**

> i put a fair amount of aave in here cause my black ass finally has an excuse to write how i talk LMAO
> 
> with that out of the way, i love this movie to pieces; i hope that translates here!
> 
> [art by hatsunemikuo on tumblr!!]  
> [[originally written for Behind The Mask: An Into the Spider-Verse Fanzine]]

If Miles were the ocean, tumultuous and ever moving beneath the grace of the night sky, then Uncle Aaron was the gentle moon under which he thrashed.

_“Just keep going.”_

But how is an ocean to move without the moon’s guiding pull?

_“...just...keep going…”_

How is an ocean to gleam in the dark without the moonlight? 

* * *

There was an answering machine on the other side of the dead man’s apartment. The only thing of motion in this changeless place was the blinking red light of messages long forgotten. How poetic.

_Blink._

Miles grew weary on his feet.

Were it not for the intermittent glow of the red light, then the scene that Miles had stepped into would have felt more like a painting, tediously rendered with careful brushstrokes. But instead of a work of art, the dead man’s apartment felt more like a cemetery: calm like a Van Gogh masterpiece, but also chilling like a Henry Fuseli nightmare.

It was quaint, in a damning kind of way.

_Blink._

The answering machine pulled Miles back to the present by his wrist: to the sight of his previously wrinkled-up art taped to the walls, to the smell of dust that permeated the whole room, to the punching bag that hung hauntingly still, to the faint red light that blinked at a metronome’s pace–the only thing of motion in the dead man’s apartment.

*****TWO MINUTES AGO*****

**He opened the window that hadn’t been locked. The restless air from inside rushed past Miles. He lifted the blinds with one hand and ducked underneath them. The floorboards groaned under the weight of his shoes, the first pair that had stepped on them in a week. The swaying blinds behind him let prison-pinstripe beams of sunlight shine into the apartment, leaving particles of dust to dance in their wake. And there was an answering machine blinking on the other side of the dead man’s apartment.**

_Blink._

Miles took a few steps towards the red light. The blinds were still swaying behind him. He stepped closer. The light curved down the slope of Miles’ face. He stepped closer still. The dust particles squirmed under the gaze of light that peered through the window, and he pressed play on the dead man’s answering machine.

_Blink._

YOU HAVE 4 NEW MESSAGES. FIRST MESSAGE RECEIVED SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11TH, 2018. BEGINNING OF FIRST MESSAGE:

Surprisingly, Mama, whose voice was tinny and metallic through the speakers, had left a voicemail.

“Hi Aaron, it’s Rio. Felt like I should check in. I’m out with Miles right now, picking out new shoes for school. I know he... looks up to you a lot. He’s nervous about starting school somewhere brand new, so just… be there for him if he needs it, alright? Thank you, and take care.”

_Blink._

* * *

“You remember to lock the door?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

Miles spun the keyring around his finger in thought before turning around and starting back up the steps to Uncle Aaron’s apartment. He jiggled the knob and opened the door to his own horror.

“Uh oh,” Miles said intelligently.

“Uh oh is right!” Uncle Aaron called up the steps. “Do the top lock too!”

Miles did as he was told and heard a sure click from the doorknob. He jiggled it once more for good measure. “We’re good”

“Do I need to triple-check?”

“Nah. For sure this time we’re good.”

They turned into the alleyway carrying a speaker, packed sandwiches, and a duffle-bag with spray cans rolling about at the bottom. They reached the end of the alleyway and passed a motorcycle–a gaudy, tacky, and flashy one–that was leaned against the wall.

Uncle Aaron caught Miles staring at it and mistook his perplexity with awe.

“I’ve always thought that bike looked cool.”

“Nah. Looks like a midlife crisis on wheels.”

Uncle Aaron’s face fell. “Oh. Well I think it looks cool. Owner seems slick.” Miles snorted. Who even says “slick” anymore?

“Sure, Uncle Aaron,” Miles said with no real exasperation, “...Slick.”

Uncle Aaron’s 2007 Toyota Corolla was considerably less “slick.” In fact, it was gloriously ugly and un-slick in every conceivable sense of the word. It looked old, for one. The car’s paint was a faded blue with splotchy color on the right-hand-side door. The Spider-Man bobblehead that Miles had gotten for his uncle was stuck above the CD player, eternally cursed to nod yes to the passenger. There were CDs of 90’s rap in the cupholders, all of which were probably in the wrong cases. To top it all off, a yellow pine tree air freshener was hanging from the visor mirror. At this point, it probably did more stinking than freshening, but Uncle Aaron never really had the time to change it out.

They had been driving for about an hour. Not because of distance, but because city traffic had the incredible ability to stretch short distances over long amounts of time. There had to be some sort of urban black magic to it: a method to the metropolitan madness.

Miles pulled out his sketchbook and put his feet up next to the Spider-Man bobblehead on the dashboard.

“Feet off the dash ‘fore I drop you on the curb,” said Uncle Aaron.

Miles did as he was told–hesitantly. He pouted at the dried watermarks carved into the window as Uncle Aaron’s reflection rolled its eyes.

“Don’t give me that face. This look like a jungle gym to you?”

Miles groaned for as long as his seat reclined. He was now talking at the sunroof. “For all the arguing and not-talking y’all do–” he started, “–you and Dad are real similar.”

Uncle Aaron smiled, but it was the kind of close mouthed smile that hid clenched teeth under upturned lips. It was a sort of sardonic secret, like when you hid gum under your tongue when the teacher asked what you were chewing in the middle of class.

Uncle Aaron attempted to change the subject.

“Ay,” he said, sparing a glance down at Miles’ lap. “You gonna put that up later?”

The page of his sketchbook was turned to a doodle of a smaller Miles sitting on the lap of a younger Uncle Aaron in front of a keyboard. Miles shrugged, still flat on his back. “I dunno.”

“That looks like you when you was a toddler. This was two years ago, right?”

Miles brought the sketchbook closer to his chest. “Don’t hit me with that, Uncle Aaron,” he said to the ceiling. He tried to hide a smile.

“I’m playin with you.” He rolled down the window on the driver’s side and rested his elbow on the sill. The Spider-Man bobblehead nodded with more vigor in the wind.

“Looks kinda like that photo of us when we were messing around with your new keyboard on Christmas day. I think you were four.”

“I had a keyboard?!”

“Yeah, I got you one ‘cause your little hands kept on screwing with my keyboard.”

Miles opened up his sketchbook to the page again. Uncle Aaron’s face was smooth and strange without the added texture of a beard. His smile was real and wide, stretching across the entirety of his face. And in his lap was a little Black boy whose small and nimble hands were on top of larger Black hands that looked as if they were breaking out of the photo and somehow moving over the keyboard in front of them.

“You always gon’ look like that little boy to me,” Uncle Aaron said.

“I’m not a little kid anymore.”

*****AN OBSERVATION BROUGHT TO YOU BY MILES MORALES*****

**It was crooked, Uncle Aaron’s real grin was, and seemed to only shift to the left side of his face. A gold tooth was visible just past his most prominent white teeth, because apparently Uncle Aaron rarely brushed when he was little. “You gotta brush real good,” Dad had said to a bite-sized Miles, “Or else you’ll end up like your uncle.”**

“Oh, so you a _man_ now?”

If Miles could recline his seat back any further, he’d be clipping through the floor. “Yeah, man.”

“Uh huh. In that case, lil’ man, I’m gettin’ _real_ tired and I don’t wanna fall asleep at the wheel. Wanna learn to drive?”

Miles’ throat went dry. “Huh?!”

“You heard me. Now that you's a man, you can take over while your uncle Aaron takes a nap. Learn by doing, that’s what they say right?”

“I’m not supposed to learn for another two years– what do you mean– I can’t drive yet!”

“Yeah?” Uncle Aaron rested an elbow on the open window. “What’re you supposed to do when you wanna bring your girl out somewhere nice but you need to ask your momma to take you?”

Miles sputtered. “That’s! That’s not! I’m not–!” He put his seat back up to normal height and flailed his hands wildly about the car, as if he could grab the words he wanted from the air and throw them back at Uncle Aaron to make a point. A few seconds passed before he was finally able to form sentences. “That’s not the point! I’m not old enough!”

“Sure you are,” Uncle Aaron assured, tone dead-serious, “It’s easy, you just gotta put your foot on the left pedal when you wanna go brake, and on the right one when you wanna go faster. And steering’s easier, its like how we do in Mario Kart.”

“But–!”

But indeed, because to Miles’ utter horror, Uncle Aaron pulled over and swung his car door open. He went rigid in his seat. His side opened, and Uncle Aaron was waiting patiently as if Miles were a fully grown adult and not an actual child.

“No way I’m driving! You’re crazy!”

“Relax, little man.” Uncle Aaron grinned his lopsided grin–the real one. “We’re here.”

The thing about being Brooklyn born-and-bred is that it was easy to acquaint yourself with the night sky. All you had to do was look up and you would see the moon, the satellites, and the black void in which they nested. Perhaps an airplane would cut through the sky with the blinking lights that were attached to its metallic wings. But that was only if you were lucky enough to look up at the right time.

“Are you gonna put that drawing of us up?”

Miles thought about the drawing of him and Uncle Aaron from his sketchbook that was now a crumpled ball of paper on the floor of the car.

“Nah, don’t think so.”

“Alright.”

The thing about being Brooklyn born-and-bred is that it was difficult to truly know the night sky. Because when one lived in the city, it was almost as if the stars themselves had fallen from the sky down to Earth for man to behold: to affix to his buildings and hang from his street lamps, leaving only small scraps of light to sway in the sky with the moon. Romance novels would sing praises of constellations. NASA shirts populated every clothing store. Kids would become enamored with Orion’s belt, so much so that they would bury their noses in books for hours just to become knowledgeable enough to fly between its buckles one day.

But Miles had never really understood it.

What Miles did understand was the spider-web cracks that spindled through the streets of his city. He understood that the street lamps on Marine and 31st turned on a little earlier than the rest of the lights on the block. He knew how most pizza places nearby would deliver past 11 pm, even if their closing time said 10:30. Miles knew the buildings, the brick, the nameless lights that dotted the side of buildings at night that meant that someone was working overtime. He could feel the history that was seeped into the walls. Instead of a pathfinder that followed the stars while caught in the middle of an endless ocean, Miles was a man–a boy, if he was really being honest with himself–that followed the history while caught in an endless city.

The place that Uncle Aaron had brought him to, despite having never been here before, felt familiar to Miles because of this.

“You know where we are?” Uncle Aaron handed Miles the duffel bag of paint cans. Miles followed him onto an asphalt basketball court, one that had baskets with no nets and cracked pavement with no markings.

“Near the Bronx?”

Uncle Aaron stopped when they got to the end of the courts where two handball backboards stood. They cast short, teacup stout shadows onto the asphalt. He kicked the pebbles at their feet. “Jeff and I played basketball here when we was little,” he said, voice barely carrying far enough to be heard.

“Really?” Miles plopped the duffel bag next to his feet.

“Yeah. Neither of us were really good though. We’d play with the bigger kids for a while before they kicked us out of the court cause we were too short to make baskets, so Jeff and I would hang around here and watch instead.”

Miles took out his phone and shined the flashlight onto the handball court. It revealed the remains of once bright oranges and reds and greens, barely visible under a suffocating coat of bumpy white paint. Its color resembled that of old asbestos ceilings from the houses on the older side of Brooklyn. It stood average-looking, inconspicuous, and dirty against the starless Brooklyn night.

A blank canvas.

Miles could feel the gravity of his sketchbook, the paint cans, the wall, the art.

And don’t get this wrong; Miles was not an especially spiritual person. But in that moment, it felt as if something divine was reaching into him, scooping his soul up the way a parched man cupped his hands to bring river water to his cracked lips. And this being took Miles’ soul, tossed it at the wall, and told it to create.

He reached for the paint cans.

Miles was literally watching paint dry as he waited to put another layer of paint onto the backboard. “So…” He rocked back and forth on his feet. “You did art here?”

“Yeah,” Uncle Aaron said. “Well, it ain’t much now, but I put some stuff up back in the day.” He bent down to plug his phone into the speakers and started to look for a song. His back was facing Miles.

“Why don’t you still do it?”

“Me?” Uncle Aaron remained in thought for a few more seconds, staring at his phone screen but giving no indication of seeing anything in front of him. “I’d rather see you work your magic than have your bobblehead—“ He bopped the side of Miles’ head with his knuckles, “—stare at me, expecting a work of art. You’d just be disappointed.”

“Nah, you know I wouldn’t think that.”

There was a ten second pause with the weight of a ten year silence.

“Careful what you say, lil' man. Adults do a lot of disappointing things.”

END OF FIRST MESSAGE.

* * *

_Blink._

SECOND MESSAGE RECEIVED MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12TH, 2018. BEGINNING OF SECOND MESSAGE:

“Hey, Uncle Aaron, hope you’re good. I’m back at my dorm from the first day of school and... I don’t know how to feel about this place, man. I tried making friends but it just don’t feel the same and the other kids all already know each other. And what else... Oh! I got new shoes with Mom but I’m waiting to show you before I wear them to school ‘cause I wanna hear your opinion first… I think that’s it, I’ll call back in case I remember anything. I’ll try stopping by on Friday. Later.”

_Blink._

* * *

Miles, with the poise of a toddler learning how to walk on a frozen lake, (that is to say, none at all) burst into Uncle Aaron’s apartment through the window. With him he carried the electric and uncertain air of a great hurricane while still possessing the stature of a thirteen year old child. A graceless and gangly thirteen year old child.

Uncle Aaron was wholly unprepared for the sudden intrusion. He was leaning against a wall, wearing one boxing glove while the other lay discarded on a nearby bookshelf. Sweat glistened on his angular cheekbones and his phone was to his ear. _Not the time_ , he mouthed. Miles, downtrodden, sunk in stature and turned to exit through the way he came. But then:

“Wait! Wait hold on–no, not you sir–hold on! Yeah, one second Mister Fi–Hey! Wait up for a little, I’ll be done in a minute, alright–no sir, everything is fine. I’ll call you back soon. Yes, I will. My apologies. Goodbye.” Uncle Aaron hung up before whoever was on the other end could possibly answer back. He dropped the phone into his sweatpants’ pockets, like holding it a second longer would burn a hole through his palm.

“Sorry about that lil' man, what’s up?”

Miles still had one foot out the window.

“Nothing really. You know how it is.” Miles swung his leg back over the windowsill. In a very smooth fashion, he attempted to lean against the wall to mirror his uncle, but ended up almost falling backwards into the plant. Very smooth indeed.

Uncle Aaron’s shoulders relaxed, seemingly amused. “You good?”

“Yeah yeah, I’m good.” Miles brushed dirt off his shorts. “Who was that, by the way?”

“Just someone from work,” Aaron said.

Miles didn’t pay too much mind. He picked up two disc covers from the coffee table. “Mario Party or Wii Sports?”

“Wii Sports.” The punching bag still swayed from the ceiling. A sand filled pendulum.

*****AN ARGUMENT*****

**“I should have won that round. Real boxing don’t work like that.”**  
**“You just mad that you lost four times in a row, Uncle Aaron.”**  
**“No, the machine just reads my movements wrong!”**  
**“You being a sore loser makes this so much funnier.”**  
**“Nah man, if you and me were in a real ring and you showed up swinging around all wild like you do in the game? I’d bop your bobblehead and you’d be out like that.”**  
**“You’d still suck at Wii Sports.”**  
**"Eh, don't matter. Real boxing's funner."**  
**"'Funner' ain't a word, Uncle Aaron."**  
**"Yeah? Well 'ain't' ain't a word neither but here we are."**

Miles plopped down onto the plush chesterfield couch and set his Wii remote on the coffee table. He put his feet up tentatively, expecting Uncle Aaron to go off on him at any second.

Instead, he mirrored Miles’ movements exactly and asked, “Yo, those them Jay’s you been telling me about?”

Miles remembered himself and sat up. His red tongued Jordans rested by their heels on the coffee table, red shoelaces double-knotted. Each rabbit ear had the same amount of slack, wrapped once around Miles’ ankles so they wouldn’t drag on the ground.

“Yeah. Got em last weekend with my mom.”

“They look slick, but that ain’t how you supposed to wear ‘em.” Uncle Aaron leaned forward to undo Miles’ shoelaces and let them dangle towards the ground.

Miles wrinkled his nose. “Quit messing with me. That don’t make sense.”

“I’m serious! That’s how you wear ‘em.”

“Then what’s the point of putting laces on them?!”

“Don’t ask me lil' man, that’s just how I seen ‘em around.”

Miles considered this for a moment. He eyed his shoes and the shadow that the laces cast on the carpet. Uncle Aaron stood up and picked his up his phone from the kitchen counter. “Yo. You want Chinese or pizza?”

They got Chinese.

They were watching 90’s cartoons, the only source of light being the waning yellow rays of the sleepy Brooklyn sun and the flicker of Popeye’s on Aaron’s plasma screen.

“Ay, Miles.”

“Yeah?”

“You still haven’t told me anything about your new school.”

“Oh. Well there isn’t much to talk about.”

This was not true in the slightest. There were a lot of things that Miles could talk about, like how he had shown up late to his first period on his first day of school because he didn’t know where room 610 was. He could talk about how people had looked at him, the weird new kid, when he burst through the door with mismatched socks. Or about that one time that his headphones had spontaneously disconnected from his phone, causing it to blast Chance the Rapper from its crappy speakers in the lunch line. Or he could have talked about how he felt like a sheep in poorly made wolf’s clothing (yes, that wording was intentional), only to be devoured and torn apart the moment he didn’t walk the right walk.

“If you say so. But if you suddenly remember anything interesting, I’m here.”

They ate their Chinese. Uncle Aaron shoved a mouthful of noodles into his mouth. It was at this opportune moment that Miles decided to speak.

“I don’t think I have actual friends.”

Uncle Aaron, still chewing, talked with his eyebrows. They were furrowed in the shape of a question. It was a while before he finished chewing.

“What about your roommate? You and him have to be pretty close, don’t you?”

“I mean, he seems chill, but we’re not friends.”

“So you’re not liking it there?”

“I dunno. It seems… elitist. I don’t feel like I’m with the people. Our people.”

“With our people, huh?” He gestured vaguely with his fork. “Who exactly are our people, Miles?”

“You know. Like my friends on the basketball courts in the mornings. Or like Mrs. Medina in the laundromat. Brooklyn.”

“Visions is still in Brooklyn, ain’t it?”

“Yeah but it’s all stuffy... and gentrified.”

“Gentrified, huh? Big word for a little man.” He reached for the last spring roll with his fork and continued. “I... don’t really know what it’s like to be you. And I don’t know what your Pops would say if he were here. And I ain’t never been to a school like Visions. But I know a thing or two about… feeling out of place. Like you ain’t where you supposed to be. But after a while all that feelin’ and wonderin’ and wishin’ don’t get you nowhere but a bad, bad place.”

He tapped a finger to his temple. “The mind’s a terrible thing to waste, Miles. Even if you don’t like Visions–which I bet you will after a while–just learn. Cause even if it don’t feel like it, that school is definitely Brooklyn. And we are an extension of this city. If you’re gonna live here, you gotta love all of it– Mrs. Medina in the laundromat, the kids playing basketball on the street, and people at your school. Because they all got things to teach you, so you should learn all you can and focus on what makes you a better person. And what helps those… who are the most important to you.”

Uncle Aaron looked as if he were peering inside himself, sordid and disappointed – though Miles couldn’t possibly understand why. He watched his uncle put the spring roll back on the empty tray. Vaguely, in the back of his mind, Miles thought it strange that his cool uncle didn’t know how to use chopsticks.

“I… Thanks, Uncle Aaron. Really.” Miles raised his chopsticks towards the last spring roll. “You sure you don’t want it?”

“Go ahead lil' man. It’s all yours.”

END OF SECOND MESSAGE.

* * *

_Blink._

THIRD MESSAGE RECEIVED THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6TH, 2018. BEGINNING OF THIRD MESSAGE:

“Aaron, it’s Jeff. Look, I need you to call me if you’ve heard from Miles. He has a soft spot for you and we haven’t heard from him. You know I wouldn’t reach out if this wasn’t important. Hope you’re good.”

_Blink._

* * *

Uncle Aaron was the obnoxious, devil-may-care, music blasting upstairs-neighbor that people would complain to their landlord about as if they could afford a nicer place to live. He was hardly the only one in his building guilty of this, but he was one of the most frequent offenders. When Miles had brought this up once, Uncle Aaron had sneered. “And? The neighbors are too. They’re worse than me.”

Interestingly enough, he was right. Sometimes, when Miles would skip steps running up the fire escape and practically throw himself through Uncle Aaron’s window onto the newly replaced floorboards, he’d hear the upstairs neighbor’s speakers shaking the walls of the apartment complex with the bass line of a Post Malone song. Luckily enough, Miles liked some of Post’s stuff. Unluckily enough, Uncle Aaron did not. And on this particular Friday evening, when Miles had swung his legs over the windowsill of his uncle’s apartment, the beat of Sunflower had been drowned out with the deep bass of Uncle Aaron’s song.

“This music’s so-” Miles punctuated his sentence with a few jabs to the punching bag that swayed from the ceiling, “-ancient. This recorded in the seventies or something?”

Uncle Aaron opened the kitchen pantry and took out a loaf of packaged bread, pulling the bread clip off and twisting it untied.

“Come on now, you know I ain’t that old.” The bag stopped spinning.

“I’m serious! You got the same taste as dad.” Miles attempted an uppercut.

Uncle Aaron got a jar of mayonnaise and began to spread it onto the bread. “Yeah? Well at least that part hasn’t changed about him.” Uncle Aaron paused, knife stuttering on the pores of the bread. He tended to do that a lot when he was thinking. Miles realized that this was another one of those conversations that he would often have with his uncle, one that would need time between each exchange as if they were turning over the words on their tongues.

Uncle Aaron held his bottom lip between his teeth and seemed to stare at nothing for a while. And then:

“So your good-cop-pop blasts Biggie from his police car?”

Miles, attempting to resume the task at hand, tried to roundhouse kick the punching bag. He landed a solid hit, but the inertia of the bag caused it to swing back and knock Miles a few inches back. He huffed as he attempted another undercut. “What’s Biggie?”

Miles could have sworn that Uncle Aaron nearly dropped the knife on the floor. “Not what’s Biggie,” Uncle Aaron corrected. “But who’s Biggie. Which you should already know as my nephew.”

“Yeah?” Miles circled the bag. He threw a one-two. “What’s me being your nephew got to do with it?”

“You’re my _Brooklyn_ born and bred nephew,” Uncle _Aaron_ said, finishing up one of the sandwiches, “...And you ain’t got a clue who Biggie Smalls is?” He reached over to the boombox on top of the counter and cranked the music up even louder. Aaron had to raise his voice for Miles to hear him from across the room. “The man’s one of the greatest rappers who ever lived, and he grew up right in our neighborhood!”

“Oh yeah,” Miles lied, “Dad talks about him sometimes.”

“Good! Heard this song before then?” He turned it up louder. Miles took a break from the punching bag, heartbeat pulsing in his skull, and went to sit at the counter to turn down the boombox.

 _“If the game shakes me or breaks me, I hope it makes me a better man.”_ Miles bounced his leg to the beat.

“Rest in power B-I-G.” Uncle Aaron’s voice was quiet, barely audible over the boombox. “That line always gets to me.”

“He’s... dead?”

“Yeah. Murdered at twenty-four. It’s a damn shame.” Another pause. “Brooklyn boys have a lot of trouble making it in this world.”

Miles turned down the music by three clicks of the knob. The bridge of Uncle Aaron’s nose was furrowed between his eyebrows, bushy and unkempt. Air blew past the open window through the blinds, and the sound of aggressive Brooklyn drivers on the streets below mixed with the constant thrum of the heater. Miles bounced his leg to the beat as spoke.

“Well, you made it.”

Uncle Aaron tilted his head up from the sandwiches. “Huh?”

“I said..” Miles wiped the sweat that had accumulated on his nose from using the punching bag. “That you’ve made it. You made it, you’re from Brooklyn, and you’re alright, aren’t you?”

Uncle Aaron opened his mouth. He closed it. His face went through a multitude of emotions that Miles had never seen on his cool, debonair uncle before, emotions that made his lips tremor vaguely like an aftershock.

He spared a glance at wrinkled pieces of art taped on one of the walls, then at his cellphone that innocuously sat on the counter in front of him. The apartment hummed with the melody of the music.

_“The sky is the limit and you know that you keep on, just keep on pressing on.”_

“I’m alright? That what you think?” And Miles–a nappy headed, ashy-ankled Brooklyn boy–the most pure and genuine person that Aaron had in his life–nodded his head with zero hesitation.

Uncle Aaron looked as if he had tears welling up in his eyes.

“Well,” he managed, “If you think so, then I guess I gotta be doing alright.”

_“The sky is the limit and you know that you can have what you want, be what you want.”_

END OF THIRD MESSAGE.

* * *

_Blink._

FOURTH MESSAGE RECEIVED FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7TH, 2018. BEGINNING OF FOURTH MESSAGE:

“Hey Uncle Aaron, it’s Miles… I… it was nice to hear your voice. In the inbox message thing I mean. We weren’t… on the same side, but I still think that you’re a good person. You could have… done better. I think you were about to. Because you’re a good guy. And I know Dad knows that too... He misses you. I miss you, so so much. And I’m real scared, and I’m about to do something really big and probably kind of dumb that might determine the fate of every reality in existence but it’s whatever. Well not really whatever, but you know. I uh, wish you were here, I really do.

“I think… that you’d be proud of me.”

_Blink._

* * *

There was a thing or two that Miles had learned about this whole “hero” thing. Well, if he was being honest with himself, it was more like a thousand things or two. But that was not the point.

The point was his realization that there’s always some kind of poetry that can be found in a superhero story. Tragedy, bravery, despair, fear–just add water.

This realization came when Miles found himself surrounded by a crowd of sky. If he squinted, he could see the stars amongst the satellites.

_“Just keep going.”_

If he could fly as birds do, then perhaps he’d be able to leap off this skyscraper and rise instead of fall. He’d weave through the belt loops of Orion.

And maybe this was when Miles finally understood the allure of what was above him. When his awe at the sky at last matched the feeling that he got whenever he found himself caught between two looming skyscrapers–a feeling that felt like the swelling of violins getting caught up in his chest. And where there was awe, there was also fear.

 *****AN UNCOMPLETE RECOLLECTION*****  
**Mercy was a beautiful thing to witness unfold.**

When Uncle Aaron had pulled off his mask on a suburban rooftop with his gnarled, clawed hands that had been gripped around Miles’ throat, there was fear in his eyes. But there was also realization. A loosening of grip. There was affection. And there was love. And then, suddenly, there was barely anything at all.

 *****A COMPLETE RECOLLECTION*****  
**Mercy was a dangerous thing to behold.**

When Miles tore his gaze from the sky and looked down below, he did not see people walking down sidewalks, but rather the cells of the being that was his city; while somehow staying stationary, she always seemed to be moving as if she were truly alive. She housed millions and millions of people while also being a person unto herself. She smelled like hopes and dreams and soot and history. The thrum of electricity was the blood that ran through her veins, the foundations of the buildings the feet upon which she stood. And her people, the cells through which she was able to function. They all had lives, went through cycles, and had organs while still being constituents of a being much more magnificent.

_“...just... keep going...”_

And the more Miles thought about it, the more he realized that Brooklyn lived in him much more than he lived in Brooklyn.

Miles felt fear. But he leapt. The glass shattered from beneath his fingertips.

_Blink._

END OF FINAL MESSAGE.

* * *

There was a familiar drawing taped to the wall above the answering machine. It looked like it had been crumpled up into a ball and discarded, valleys and mountains visible in the topography of the paper. Miles looked down at the answering machine.

0 NEW MESSAGES.

Miles didn’t think that he’d ever step into a place like Uncle Aaron’s apartment again. Mario Kart and Wii sports were stacked neatly on the coffee table. The red chesterfield couch still looked like the most comfortable place in the world. The motionless apartment felt like a painting. Perhaps a Monet piece.

He ran his hands along everything that crossed his path: dragged his fingers on granite countertops, traced his palms along the tops of chairs, tapped his nails on tables. Miles stopped when he saw his reflection on the surface of the stainless steel refrigerator.

He had always been an ugly crier.

Despite the rivers of dried tears that sloped down his face, his reflection was offering him a smile, lopsided like his uncle’s, pearly white like his father’s, and radiant like his mother’s. The quietness of the moment was interrupted by Miles’ phone vibrating in his pocket. He picked up.

“Hello?”

“Miles!” came his father’s voice. “Hey, where are you? I got you a bunch of new paints for the mural today.”

Miles hastily attempted to wipe off the remaining tears on his face and gazed straight ahead at his reflection in the refrigerator before making his way to the windowsill.

“Sorry, had to go back to my dorm for my sketchbook.”

“No worries, Miles. Any idea what you want to put up for your Uncle?”

Miles was initially going to go into this whole mural situation flying by the seat of his pants, but as he assessed Uncle Aaron’s apartment one last time, he took notice of the crumpled piece of paper taped above the answering machine. It had stopped blinking.

“I think so.”

“Well, get here soon alright? Love you.”

“Okay, love you too.”

Miles put his phone back into his pocket and found himself back in front of the answering machine. He took a breath that he didn’t know he had been holding.

* * *

If Miles were the ocean, tumultuous and ever-moving under the gravity of his planet, then his city–his people, his friends, his mother, his father–would be the earth upon which he thrashed.

 *****A FATHER-SON MURAL*****  
(Art by [hatsunemikuo](hatsunemikuo.tumblr.com) on tumblr!)

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if the image didn't load- i'm on vacation right now so my connection isn't the best! i'll upload when i get the chance.
> 
> if you liked it, a comment would very much be appreciated (pls)
> 
> thanks for reading!  
> tumblr: exogeneesis or elevatte


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